Digital Realty — AI supply-chain exposure

Digital Realty is a hyperscale data-center landlord — it builds and leases the physical shells, power connections and cooling that cloud platforms and AI operators fill with their own hardware. It sits in the infrastructure layer of the chain, one rung below the servers: it supplies the space, grid access and thermal capacity that any AI cluster has to live inside.

Its structural hook is that AI compute is ultimately power- and space-constrained, and operators who control interconnection-rich, power-secured campuses hold real leverage as capacity tightens. The flip side, which the model flags as AI-buildout risk, is that its returns depend on how much of the build-out becomes durable leased demand rather than a construction cycle that overshoots. The model places it at a modest centrality — essential real estate, but a step removed from the silicon that sets the pace.